Welcome
Troubleshooting and support
Learn about solutions to common problems that might arise when you use BigFix Inventory BigFix Inventory and how to find logs and trace files that help you troubleshoot those problems.
Troubleshooting software discovery
Problems with software discovery usually fall into one of three categories. The most common category is when the software is discovered but the components are assigned to an incorrect product. In this case, it is enough to reassign the component. The remaining categories include false-positive discovery, or no discovery due to the lack of the signature on the computer.
Common problems
Learn how to solve some common problems with the server installation, configuration and administration.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 11 Inventory Documentation
Welcome to the BigFix Inventory documentation, where you can find information about how to install and configure BigFix Inventory. The application provides you with information about your inventory and license metrics. You can manage your software assets, gather information about your hardware, and ensure license compliance for your enterprise using BigFix Inventory.
BigFix Platform
Overview
Become familiar with key concepts that are necessary to understand how BigFix Inventory works and learn about features and functions that are introduced in every version of the application.
Installing
Learn about the requirements and available installation scenarios to ensure that the deployment of BigFix Inventory goes smoothly in your environment.
Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
Upgrading
A new version of BigFix Inventory is released periodically, typically at the end of each calendar quarter. Upgrade to the new version regularly to take full advantage of new features and application fixes.
Catalog Overview
This section provides information about catalog updates available with every release.
Managing the infrastructure
After you complete the initial configuration of BigFix Inventory, learn how to manage components of its infrastructure: VM managers, server, database, and data sources.
Software inventory and license utilization
You can classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
Managing security threats
Learn how to use BigFix Inventory to manage security threats in your environment. You can view whether any of the installed components is prone to any Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE).
Tutorials
Tutorials help you understand how to use BigFix Inventory. They consist of modules that focus on broad goals. Modules consist of tasks that show how to configure specific settings step-by-step.
Security
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
Troubleshooting and support
Learn about solutions to common problems that might arise when you use BigFix Inventory BigFix Inventory and how to find logs and trace files that help you troubleshoot those problems.
- Troubleshooting a problem
  Troubleshooting is a systematic approach to solving a problem. The goal of troubleshooting is to determine why something does not work as expected and explain how to resolve the problem.
- Duplicate UUIDs problem
  BigFix Inventory requires unique virtual machine UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) numbers to calculate the capacity for all virtual machines and to detect virtualization hierarchy. If there are computers with duplicated UUIDs, a message is displayed in the To Do list. The import log also shows a warning about duplicate UUIDs.
- Interrupting software scan
  BigFix Inventory scans run in the background. Fixlets, such as Initiate Software Scan and Initiate Software Scan on Shared Disks trigger the scan to run in the background.
- Troubleshooting software discovery
  Problems with software discovery usually fall into one of three categories. The most common category is when the software is discovered but the components are assigned to an incorrect product. In this case, it is enough to reassign the component. The remaining categories include false-positive discovery, or no discovery due to the lack of the signature on the computer.
  - Troubleshooting Oracle data issues
    This section provides information troubleshooting different issues faced during collecting Oracle data.
  - Incorrect software is displayed on reports due to incorrect bundling
    Bundling assistant assigns discovered software components to products based on bundling rules. The rules assess the probability with which a component is part of a particular product. Because bundling assistance takes into account all products that are available in the software catalog, not only products that you purchased, it might happen that the component is assigned to a product that you do not have. As a result, the product that you have is not displayed on the reports, and some other product is displayed instead. To solve the problem, reassign the discovered component to the correct product.
  - Software that you do not have is discovered due to false-positive discovery
    It might happen that an older version of the software is discovered after the upgrade or the software signature is not removed from the computer during the uninstallation. False-positive discovery can also be caused by backups of software directories or installation media that are stored on the endpoints and are reported as separate software instances.
  - Software that you have is not discovered
    It might happen that software that is installed is not discovered because the signature or the software ID tag does not exist on the computer where the software is installed.
  - Troubleshooting problems with computers
    When you encounter problems with scan results not being uploaded from a particular computer or you need to collect all logs from that computer, use the Computer Support Data panel. The panel is available in BigFix Inventory and is used to perform some troubleshooting actions without the need of using the BigFix console.
  - Disaster recovery
    To perform disaster recovery for your BigFix environment, you need to regularly back up the BigFix Inventory database and the BigFix platform server.
  - Common problems
    Learn how to solve some common problems with the server installation, configuration and administration.
    - Agent problems
      The Deployment Health widget provides the status of computers that do not meet one or more of the deployment health conditions. To resolve deployment health issues, perform the steps relevant for your particular problem. The BigFix console provides fixlets that can be run to resolve some deployment health issues. Issues that cannot be resolved by using fixlets must be resolved manually.
    - Catalog problems
      Catalog problems are related to the inability to download a new catalog or upload it to BigFix Inventory.
    - Data import problems
      Data import problems are related to situations in which the data import fails or the data that is displayed in reports is inconsistent as a result of a failed import.
    - Database problems
      Database problems are related to issues with connecting to DB2 and MSSQL Server as well as retrieving information from these databases.
    - Installation and upgrade problems
      Solve common problems that are related to installation, configuration, and upgrade of BigFix Inventory.
    - Hardware inventory problems
      Find the solution to the issues that you have encountered while working with virtual machine managers and hardware inventory.
    - Scan problems
      The most common problems with software scans are reported on the Software Scan Health widget. Refer to this topic to learn how to solve problems that are reported on the widget as well as for solutions to other scan-related problems.
    - Security problems
      Security problems in BigFix Inventory might include issues with logging in to the application or those related to the security of your credentials and your environment. However, you can easily recover from these problems.
    - Server operation problems
      Server operation problems in BigFix Inventory might include general issues that you might encounter when you use the application and its functions. However, you can easily recover from these problems.
    - User interface problems
      User interface problems in BigFix Inventory are mostly related to information that is incorrectly displayed in the application or to errors that arise in the non-English-language versions of the software. However, you can easily recover from these problems.
  - Logs and return codes
    Find logs and interpret return codes to troubleshoot issues.
Tuning performance
Learn how to plan the infrastructure of BigFix Inventory and to configure the application server to achieve optimal performance. The following guidelines are applicable in big data environments as well as in smaller environments that are running on low-performance hardware.
Integrating with REST API
External systems integration is one of the key features of BigFix Inventory. Business logic is enabled for integration and interfaces are provided for common integration points.
Glossary
Guide in PDF format
DataFlow ServiceNow Integration

Common problems

Learn how to solve some common problems with the server installation, configuration and administration.

The following list contains descriptions of common installation problems: